Panorama - Making a Start

What really are the most important works by this or that composer? What are the recordings that assure one of a definitive interpretation? Panorama, a reduced price 2-CD series, is designed to help one make a start, using as its material the treasure-house of music, performances and artists that is the DG catalogue

Panorama steers a tour of the great composers and their very best music: works by Bach and Handel, by Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, by Verdi and Wagner, by Rimsky-Korsakov and Prokofiev. Not only that, Panorama traverses the important epochs of musical history: the mysteries of Gregorian chant, the fascinating sound-world of the Renaissance, the splendours of the Baroque era.

The instruments which play such an important part in the polyphonic concert of Western music - for example, the violin and the piano - are featured here, too. Milestones of every musical genre will be at the heart of Panorama.

Our series leaves nothing to be desired on the performance side, either. Not least, it is an anthology of famous recordings, presenting a broad spectrum of world-class musicians: Herbert von Karajan, Leonard Bernstein, Claudio Abbado and many more giants conducting orchestral works from the Viennese Classical School and the Romantic era; leading protagonists of historical performance practice, such as Reinhard Goebel and Trevor Pinnock play highlights of Baroque music with their own ensembles.

The list of instrumental soloists is no less star-studded,with Anne-Sophie Mutter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Martha Argerich and Maurizio Pollini among them. The vocal artists, too, are some of the most famous singers of their age: Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti and José Carreras are here, as surely as are the prima donne assolute Cheryl Studer, Katia Ricciarelli and Renata Scotto.

The series provides a new look at classical music - as the covers promise: a panorama of all the important classical works of DG's roster of great artists and its archives of famous recordings.